“if i were not a farmer, i would like to be a master mason,” said ruth seer very firmly.
she was sitting by the roadside, watching the workmen lay the foundation for her first cottage. the process interested her enormously. the master mason at intervals paused in his work and instructed her as to its purport. she was learning the use and meaning of the square, the level, and the plumb-rule. she was also enjoying herself quite a lot.
across her knees lay bertram aurelius. he guggled cheerfully in answer, and bit her forefinger vigorously with such teeth as he possessed.
bertram aurelius had come into the world without benefit of clergy. his father belonged to the b.e.f., his mother was a between-maid, and in the ordinary course of events he should have gone to his own place. but values had shifted considerably during the years of the great war, and in the year of peace both male babies, even though unauthorized, and between-maids, 86had come to be recognized as very distinctly valuable assets.
gladys bone, bertram aurelius’s mother, aged eighteen, was pathetically anxious to please, a trait which had probably assisted in her undoing, and took the good advice meekly, except where bertram aurelius was concerned. here the good ladies, who had with great difficulty scraped together the money to start a rescue home for unmarried mothers in fairbridge, reasoned with her in vain. she insisted on his certainly somewhat startling combination of names and persisted in calling him by both. she was perfectly unashamed of the fact that he had no authentic father.
“ain’t he beautiful?” seemed to appear to her quite a sufficient answer to those who endeavoured to present the subject in its proper light. and, worst of all, she absolutely refused to be separated from him.
the little grey-haired, pink-cheeked spinster, who practically settled such matters, was in despair. in her inmost heart she sympathized with gladys, bertram aurelius being an infant of considerable charm. at the same time she realized that it was almost impossible to find anyone mad enough to engage a housemaid, or even a between-maid, with a baby thrown in.
one day, however, when bertram aurelius 87had reached the adorable age of ten months, the unexpected happened. little miss luce travelled from london in the same carriage with ruth seer, and getting into conversation, told her the story of gladys and bertram aurelius bone. at the moment ruth was meditating the possibility of getting a girl to help miss mccox without permanently destroying the peace of thorpe farm. gladys bone seemed the possibility. never having lived, save for her brief three months’ companionship, in a well-regulated family, the accompanying baby did not strike her as an impossibility, but rather as a solution.
then and there on arriving at fairbridge did miss luce carry her off to see them both.
bertram aurelius had eyes the colour of a delphinium, a head of red down, and a skin like strawberries and cream. he had little hands that held you tight and pink toes which he curled and uncurled. he crowed at ruth and promptly put her finger in his mouth.
“ain’t he beautiful?” said his small mother.
“she is really an excellent worker,” said little miss luce, when gladys and bertram aurelius had been dismissed. “and she will do anything for anyone who is good to the baby. if you think you could manage with him, possibly——?”
88she looked at ruth anxiously.
ruth laughed. “my dear lady,” she said, “i have just discovered that the one thing wanted to make thorpe perfect is a baby.”
“but you have other servants,” suggested miss luce. “i fear you may find them a difficulty.”
certainly miss mccox’s attitude towards the situation was more than doubtful, but ruth had learnt that a distinctly soft kernel existed somewhere under the hard shell of an unattractive personality. she thought of bertram aurelius’s blue eyes and soft red head.
“i think you must send gladys out to thorpe to apply for the situation with bertram aurelius,” she said.
they looked at each other, and miss luce nodded comprehensively. “he is a very attractive baby,” she murmured.
it was the next morning, while ruth was revelling in the arrival of delicious fluffy yellow things in her fifty-egg incubator, that miss mccox emerged from the house, evidently the bearer of news of importance.
as always, she was spotlessly clean and almost unbearably neat, and her clothes appeared to be uncomfortably tight. her collar was fastened by a huge amber brooch, her waist-belt by a still larger glittering metal buckle, 89both presents from the young man to whom she had been engaged in her distant youth, and who had died of what miss mccox described as a declining consumption. out of the corner of ruth’s eye she looked distinctly uncompromising.
“there’s a young woman come to apply for the situation,” she announced.
“does she seem likely to be any good?” asked ruth, still busy with the incubator.
“she’s got a baby,” said miss mccox, who always came to the point. “and she wants to keep it.”
“a baby?”
“a baby,” repeated miss mccox firmly. “a baby as didn’t ought to have come, but it’s there.”
“oh!” said ruth weakly. “well, what do you think about it?”
miss mccox fingered the amber brooch. this ruth knew to be a distinct sign of weakness.
“the young woman’s civil spoken, and i reckon there’s worse about with their ring on,” she said darkly. “i’m willin’ to try her, if you are.”
ruth hid a smile among the yellow chicks. the charm of bertram aurelius had worked.
“but the baby?” she asked. “can we possibly manage with the baby?”
90“why not?” returned miss mccox sharply. “babies aren’t much trouble, god knows! it’s the grown-ups make me sick!”
so bertram aurelius came to live at thorpe, and was rapidly absorbed into the life on the farm. he was a good and cheerful infant, and anyone could take charge of him. he was equally contented, whether viewing the world over ruth’s shoulder while she inspected the farm, or in his cradle in the corner of the kitchen listening to curious noises called singing, which miss mccox, to the amazement of the whole establishment, produced for his benefit. he would lie among the hay in a manger, even as the babe of all time, while ruth and the cowman milked, or on his crawler on the terrace, guarded by sarah and selina, who took to him much as if he had been one of those weird black and white puppies of sarah’s youthful indiscretion. and gladys, his mother, worked cheerfully and indefatigably to please, sitting at miss mccox’s feet for instructions, and the peace and comfort of thorpe deepened and broadened day by day.
it was now near mid-june, and the fine weather still held. day after day broke to unclouded sunshine, a world full of flowers and the rhythmic life of growing things. the seeds and baby plants cried for rain, the hay and 91fruit crops would suffer, but ruth, her heart torn both ways, could not regret. it was all so beautiful, and when the rain came, who could tell? it might be all the real summer weather of the year, this wonderful may and june.
to-day, little ever-so-soft white clouds broke the clear blue of the sky, but there was still no sign of change. the wild roses and the broom were in perfection, and everywhere was the honey and almond scent of gorse; the buttercup glory was over but the ox-eyed daisies were all out, turning their sweet moon faces to the sun.
from where she sat ruth could see the rose-red roofs of thorpe with the white pigeons drowsing in the heat. her cottages were to be equally beautiful on a smaller scale. she dreamt, as she sat in the warmth and the sweetness, with bertram aurelius cooing softly in her lap, visualizing pictures such as were growing in the minds of many in the great year of peace, seeing beautiful homes where the strong man and the mother, with sturdy round-limbed children, should live, where the big sons and comely daughters should come in and out, in the peace of plenty and to the sound of laughter. it might all be so wonderful, for the wherewithal is ours, is here with us. the good brown earth, the sun and the rain, fire and water, all 92the teeming life of nature, all ours to mould into a life of beauty for ourselves and our children.
dreams? yes. but such dreams are the seeds of the beautiful, which shall, if they find soil, blossom into beauty in the time to come, for the little children lying on our knees, clutching at our hearts.
presently there intruded into ruth’s dreams the large presence of mr. pithey, and she discovered him standing in the white dust of the road in front of her. disapproval and curiosity both appeared together in his little sharp eyes. according to mr. pithey’s ideas it was distinctly unseemly for a person in ruth’s position to sit by the roadside “like a common tramp,” as he expressed it to mrs. pithey later on. to his mind, somehow, the baby in her lap accentuated the unseemliness, and it made the thing worse that she was both hatless and gloveless. had she been properly dressed for the roads, the rest might have been an accident.
“i should think you’d get a sunstroke, sitting by the road like that without your hat,” he said.
mr. pithey himself was expensively dressed in pale grey with a white waistcoat and spats. on his head he wore a five-guinea panama, and his general appearance forcibly reminded ruth 93of an immaculately groomed large, pale yellow pig. her grey eyes smiled at him out of her sun-browned face. she had a disarming smile.
“i believe i was nearly asleep,” she said, and dug her knuckles into her eyes much as a child does.
mr. pithey softened. “what on earth are you sitting there for?” he asked.
“just dreaming. but you mustn’t think i’m an idler, mr. pithey. even pan sleeps at this hour.”
her smile deepened, and mr. pithey softened still more. he stepped out of the dust into the grass, passing as he did so into a more friendly attitude.
“pan?—that’s a queer name for a baby!” he said.
the smile became just the softest thing in laughs. “well, his proper name is bertram aurelius. but pan——” she held bertram aurelius up the while he chuckled at her, striving to fit his hand into his mouth. “look at his blue eyes, and his little pointed ears, and his head of red down. really pan suits him much better.”
“um,” said mr. pithey. “bertram is a good sensible name for a boy, like my own, and not too common. better stick to that. so you’ve 94started your cottages. well, you remember what i told you. don’t you think they’re going to pay, because they won’t.”
“oh yes, they’ll pay,” said ruth. “why, of course they’ll pay!” there was mischief in her eye.
“now look here,” said mr. pithey heavily. “it’s no good talking to a woman; it’s in at one ear and out of the other. but if you’ll walk up to the house with me, i’ll put it down in black and white. the return you’ll get for your money——”
“oh, money!” interrupted ruth. “i wasn’t thinking of money.”
mr. pithey heeled over, as it were, like a ship brought up when sailing full before the wind.
“if it’s damned rotten sentiment you’re after,” he exclaimed, “well you can take my word for it that doesn’t pay either!”
ruth looked up at him as he stood over her, a very wrathfully indignant immaculate, pale yellow pig indeed. she thought of his millions, and the power they wielded and then of the power they might wield if backed by any imagination.
“mr. pithey,” she said, and her voice was very low, and it had in it the sound of many waters which had gone over her soul, “i have 95seen our dead men lie in rows, many hundreds, through the dark night, waiting till the dawn for burial; they did not ask if it paid.”
mr. pithey shuffled with his big feet in the grass. “that’s different,” he said, but his little sharp eyes fell. “i should have gone myself, but my business was of national importance, as of course you know. yes, that’s different. that’s different.” he seemed to find satisfaction in the words. he eyed ruth again with equanimity. “of course you ladies don’t understand, but you can’t bring sentiment into business.”
he puffed himself out. again the phrase pleased.
ruth rose to her feet. even to her broad charity he had become oppressively obnoxious.
“how much did you offer me for thorpe?” she asked suddenly.
mr. pithey’s eyes snapped. “twenty-five per cent. on your money,” he said, “or i might even go a bit higher as you’re a lady.”
ruth tossed bertram aurelius over her shoulder, laughing.
“do you know what has made thorpe the gem it is?” she asked. “why, sentiment! unless you have some to spend on it, it wouldn’t pay you to buy.”
96she nodded a farewell and left him with a strangled “damn” on his lips. he yearned after thorpe. as a pleasure farm for himself it left little to be desired.
he expressed his feelings to mrs. pithey, who, coming along presently in her rolls-royce, with the two elder children in their best clothes, picked him out of the dust and took him home to tea.
“why, it must have been her i passed just now!” she exclaimed. “there now, if i didn’t think it was just a common woman, and never bowed!”
“a good thing too!” said mr. pithey majestically. and he said to mrs. pithey all the things he would have said to miss seer if she had given him a chance.
undisturbed by the omission, ruth went home across the flowered fields, but mr. pithey himself oppressed her. it seemed grossly unfit, somehow, that the life sacrifice of those dead boys should result in benefit, material benefit at any rate, to the pitheys of the world; it shocked even one’s sense of decency.
but bertram aurelius’s head was very soft against her throat as he dropped into sleep. the sun was very warm, the almond and honey scent of gorse was very sweet. presently 97she unruffled, and began to sing the song which seemed to her to belong especially to thorpe:
“when i have reached my journey’s end
and i am dead and free,
i pray that god will let me go
along the flowered fields i know
that look towards the sea.”
so she came to the stile which led to the buttercup field, crimson and white now with sorrel and ox-eyed daisies. and standing among the flowers was a slim figure, the figure of a woman dressed all in white. ruth stopped on the stile to look. it was so beautiful in poise and outline, it gave her that little delightful shock of joy which only beauty gives. backed by the blue sky, bathed in the broad afternoon sunlight, it was worthy even of her flower fields. very still the figure stood, gazing across those fields that “looked towards the sea,” and just as still, in a breathless pause, ruth stood and watched and wondered.
for gradually she became aware of a strange appearance as of fire surrounding the slim figure. it was of oval shape, vivid scarlet in colour, deepening at the base. other colours there were in the oval, but the fiery glow of the 98red drowned them into insignificance. ruth shaded her eyes with her disengaged hand, suspecting some illusion of light, but the oval held its shape under the steady scrutiny, and with a little gasp she realized that she was looking at that which the ordinary physical sight does not reveal. vague memories of things read in old books out of raphael goltz’s library, descriptions of the coloured auric egg which, invisible to the human eye, surrounds all living forms, raced hurriedly through her mind, but she had read of them more with curiosity than with any thought that they would ever come within the boundary of her own consciousness. as she realized what the phenomenon was, a growing shrinking from it, a sense of horror, a feeling that there was something sinister, threatening, in the fiery implacable red of the appearance, came over her like a wave. she was glad of bertram aurelius’s warm little body against her own, and found she was fighting a desire to turn back and retrace her steps. a desire so wholly absurd on the face of it, that she shook herself together and resolutely moved forward. as she did so, the white figure moved too, coming down the slope of the field to meet her, and as it came the scarlet oval faded, flickered, and, so far as ruth was concerned, seemed to go out. the ordinary everyday 99things of life came back with a curious dislocating jerk, and she found herself looking into a very wonderful pair of golden-brown eyes set in short, but oddly thick, black lashes, and a light high voice spoke, a voice with sudden bell-like cadences in it, so often heard in the voice of french women. it was as attractive as all the rest of violet riversley’s physical equipment.
“is it miss seer? may i introduce myself? i expect as roger north’s daughter will be simplest,” she said, holding out her hand “father dropped me here on his way to fairbridge with lady condor. they are both calling here later to see you and pick me up, also hoping for tea, father told me to say. your maid told me i should find you if i came down this way. do you mind that i have picked some of your moon daisies? there are none fine as grow in this field.”
“no, no, of course not,” ruth half stammered, realizing for the first time that she carried a sheaf of daisies in the bend of her arm. why, everything would have been hers but for the chance of war. this was the woman who was to have married dick carey. and somehow, all at once, ruth knew that this meeting was not the ordinary everyday occurrence such meetings mostly are. it had a meaning, a purpose 100of its own. she felt a sudden shrinking of some inner sense, even as she had just now felt a physical shrinking. she wanted to back out of something, she knew not what, just as she had had that ridiculous desire just now to turn round and go the other way. and yet, standing staring at her in this stupid dumb way, she did not dislike violet riversley; far from it. she was distinctly attracted by her, and her beauty drew ruth like a charm.
it seemed quite a long time before she heard her own voice saying, “please pick—take—anything you like.”
“thanks ever so much,” said mrs. riversley. she had turned to walk up the path. “i’m just like a child. i always want to pick flowers when i see them, and they seem to grow here better than anywhere else i know. mr. carey used to say he had squared the flower elementals.”
she spoke the name quite simply and casually, while ruth was conscious of a ridiculous feeling of shyness.
“i think it quite likely,” she answered. “look at the wisteria.” they had reached the ridge of the slope and could see where the flowered fields merged into the garden proper. “all along the top of the wall, against the blue. i have never seen any so wonderful.”
101it was amazingly wonderful, but mrs. riversley looked at it without any apparent pleasure.
“it is ever so good of you to let me come and invade you in this informal way,” she said, with her little gracious social manner. “father said he was sure you would not mind. and you won’t let me interrupt you, will you? you work on the farm yourself, don’t you? it is not just a pretence of farming with you.”
“i was just going to milk,” said ruth, smiling. “we are one hand short to-day, so if you won’t mind my leaving you till teatime, and you will just do exactly what you like, and pick anything you like——”
then violet riversley did, for her, an unusual thing. she slipped her hand into ruth’s, as a shy, rather lonely child might have done. it was one of the moments when she was irresistible.
“let me come with you and watch,” she said. “and why do you carry that big baby about? is it a good work?”
“he’s the farm baby,” said ruth, her eyes twinkling. “and we found him under a gooseberry-bush.”
they had reached the terrace, and the pigeons, just awake from their midday slumber on the sun-baked roof, came tumbling down, fluttering round ruth, searching the big pockets of 102her overall for corn, while bertram aurelius vainly strove to catch a wing or tail.
mrs. riversley stood at a little distance. “my goodness, they are tame,” she exclaimed, as the pretty chase for the hidden food went on. “just as tame as they were with——” she stopped and looked round her. “it is extraordinary how little the place has changed—and it’s not pretending either—it really is just the same here. the same old comfortable at-home feeling. did you know mr. carey by any chance? no, i suppose not. but it’s funny—i have something the same feeling with you i always had with him, and with no one else ever in the world. you rest me—you do me good—you are something cool on a hot day. you know, father felt it too, and he is not given to feelings. do get rid of that great fat lump. put him back under his gooseberry-tree. then we will go milking.” she advanced on bertram aurelius threateningly. “where does he go?”
ruth broke into laughter. “he will go in the manger on the hay, or anywhere else that comes handy. or—but wait a minute—here come the dogs.”
sarah and selina were proceeding decorously up the path from the front gate. to all appearances they had been taking a little gentle exercise. there was an air of meekness, an engaging 103innocence, about them which, to those who knew them, told its own tale. they had undoubtedly been up to mischief.
“the dogs?” queried mrs. riversley.
“they will look after him,” explained ruth.
she went into the house and brought out a small wooden cradle on rockers. in this she arranged bertram aurelius, who took the change with his usual philosophy, waved his bare pink legs with vigour, and strove to catch the sunbeams flickering through the jasmine leaves. the little dogs sat side by side, very alert and full of responsibility.
it was a picture full of charm, but mrs. riversley held herself aloof, though she watched the swift neat movement of ruth’s work-worn hands with interest until she joined her.
then she became for the next half-hour an entirely delightful companion, talking gaily in her pretty cadenced voice, flitting here and there like some white bird about the big fragrant cowshed, eager with the impulsive eagerness of a child to show that she too knew how to milk. dick had taught her. she spoke of him frequently and without self-consciousness. she told ruth many things that interested her to know. and gradually the curious shell of hardness, that apparent want of sympathy with all the beautiful teeming life of the farm disappeared. 104she milked, to ruth’s astonishment, well and deftly. she understood much about chicken and pigs. she held the down-soft yellow ducklings in her shapely hands, and broke into open enthusiasm over the little white kid who ran with the herd.
“i wonder,” she said, when the milking was over and ruth suggested tea, “i wonder if by any chance our ‘house on the wall’ is still there?”
“you mean where the kitchen garden wall is built out to meet the beech-tree, and the branches are like three seats, the highest one in the middle, and there are some shelves?”
“yes—yes! and you can see all round and no one can see you. dick built it for us when we were children—fred, and i, and the condor boys. we were always here. we played at keeping house up there, and dick used to tell us stories about all the animals—there was one about a mouse family too—and about the elementals. the water elementals, who took care of the river, and who brought the rain, and the dew in the early summer mornings; they were all like silver gossamer and white foam. and the earth elementals, who looked after the flowers’ food; and the elementals of fire.”
she stopped suddenly and shivered. they were crossing a corner of the orchard on their 105way to the kitchen garden, and, to ruth’s astonishment, she looked round her with something like fear in her eyes.
“did you feel it get colder, quite cold,” she said, “as we crossed the footpath just there?”
“i believe it did, now you say so,” said ruth. “you get those funny bands of colder air sometimes. the ground dips too, under those apple-trees.”
violet shivered again. she looked at the apple trees and the odd look of fear in her eyes deepened. “has anyone ever spoken to you of a man called von sch?de, a german, who used to stay here?” she asked.
“no,” said ruth, and wondered.
“he asked me to marry him, just over there, under that biggest tree. it was covered with blossom then, and there were white butterflies about. oh, he frightened me!” her voice rose in a little cry. “he frightened me. i hate to think of it even now. i felt as if he could make me do it, whether i wanted to or no. he kissed me—like no one had ever kissed me before—i could have killed him, i hated him so. but even then i was afraid he might make me do it. i was afraid. i would not see him again alone, and i never felt really safe till i was engaged to dick, and even then”—her voice dropped very low—“i was glad when karl was killed. 106do you think it was very horrid of me? i couldn’t help it. sometimes, even now, i dream in the night that he has never died, that he has come back and can make me do what he likes.” she shuddered. “i have to shake myself quite wide awake before i know it is only a beastly dream. and i haven’t dick now any more.”
she looked back over her shoulder and shivered again.
“you are sure that cold feeling was just quite ordinary?”
“why, yes,” said ruth. “what should it be?”
“i don’t know. let us get to the house on the wall.”
she hurried on, and her slender feet in white went up the rough steps as one at home. she stood for a few moments and looked round, while the old memories of what seemed like another life came thronging back. then she climbed up into the middle seat, and sat there, gathering herself together as a child does when it is concentrating deeply. in the flickering shadow of the leaves above and around, her face looked wan, mysterious almost, her strange golden eyes curiously alive, yet gazing, it seemed, into another world.
her seat in the circle looked out across the 107great endless valley stretching away to the west. immediately below was the big hay field, ready now for cutting. it fell in a gentle slope to the river, which, diving under the roadway by the front gate, curved round the garden, and broke out into a miniature pond at the bottom of the field, before it vanished among the bracken where the territory of thorpe ended and the great beautiful forest of the condor estate commenced. in the pond were water-lilies, rose-coloured and white, and tall brown bulrushes, all in their season of perfection. most noticeable in the noble stretch of landscape beyond was a clump of beech-trees on the ridge of the near side of the valley, lifted up sheer against the height of the sky. they had caught for many years the full blast of the winds coming up from the north-east, and only the topmost branches survived, leaving their straight exquisite trunks bare. to-day, standing high above the blue distances, in the shimmering light and heat, they had about them more than usual of majesty and mystery.
violet riversley sat very still. the myriads of summer leaves rustled softly; here and there a bird sang. presently she began to speak, even as another bird might have begun to sing.
“and it takes a long time to get the water-lilies to grow, because they won’t come anywhere 108until they are sure you really love them, not just want them for show. it’s the same with the madonna lilies. and they never make mistakes. you’ve got really to love them. and the water-lilies like bulrushes close at hand for a bodyguard, because the water-lilies are of royal birth. the water elementals told dick all this. and so the lilies grew, and i loved the pink ones best, but he loved the white. and the tops of the beech-trees with the long trunks are where the earth elementals say their prayers; they choose trees like that so that the earth children cannot climb up and disturb them. if you disturb them when they are saying their prayers they get cross, and then the flowers come all wrong. red roses with a green spike in their hearts, and the lime flowers covered with black. and all that shimmery heat is like it is in the desert, all like that and no green. only here and there water in a grove of palm-trees. and there is the wood where the winds live. they will all be at home to-day, resting.”
ruth held her breath while she listened, and then the voice fell very softly into silence. and quite suddenly there came a sudden shower of big soft tears. they made blurred marks on the lustrous white skin, and she looked at ruth 109with dim wet eyes like a child who had been naughty.
presently she got up and came and sat down on the top of the wall facing the garden.
“come and sit here too,” she said, patting the bricks beside her. “it’s quite comfy if you put your heels back into the steps. there’s just room for two. we used to watch for dick coming home from here—i and fred and the eldest condor boy. he was killed at messines—and little teddy rawson, the vicar’s son—he was afraid of almost everything—mice and ferrets—just like a girl—and he died a hero’s death at gallipoli. and sybil rawson—she went as a nurse to salonica, and was torpedoed coming home, and drowned. only fred and i left, and the two youngest condors.”
again she fell on silence, and again ruth held her breath. she feared that any word of hers might break the spell of this return to the past days which were like another life.
“the flowers grow for you too. they are just as wonderful as ever,” mrs. riversley went on again, after a little while. “and you have got a blue border. delphinium, anchusa, love-in-the-mist, and the nemophila—all of them. i wonder how you came to think of that?”
110“there were some of the plants still left, and i—somehow i think i guessed.”
“and the birds? are they still as tame?”
“they were shy at first, but they are beginning to come back.”
“the robins used to fly in and out of the house. and even the swallow and kingfishers used to come quite close to dick. if i was with him i had to be quite still for a long time before they would come.”
ruth’s face lighted with a sudden thought. “the kingfishers?” she said.
“they are the shyest of all birds. i suppose we humans have always tried to catch and kill them for their plumage. dick hated that sort of thing.” her face grew hard and the strange fire burnt up again in her eyes. “and then he was shot down himself—shot down as we shoot any bird or beast.”
she stopped suddenly, the words choked back in her throat, as the condor car came over the bridge and pulled up at the gate.
then she slipped down from the wall and stood looking up at ruth. “thank you for letting me go round with you—and talk. it’s been good.” she pushed up the heavy wave of hair from her forehead under her wide-brimmed hat. “it’s taken me back for a little, to what life used to be, from what i am to what 111i was. and now let us go and pick up all the things lady condor will drop.”
lady condor’s cheerful chatter was already with them.
“now have i got everything? yes—no—where is my handkerchief? did i put it into the pocket? the parcels can all stay. no one will touch them. oh, there it is! thank you, roger.”
she began to ascend the path, shedding a blue chiffon scarf, which north retrieved as he followed her.
“oh, there you are, violet! and this is seer? an unpardonably late call, but i have been taking the chair at a meeting to discuss the women’s victory memorial. we discussed for hours—the weirdest ideas! and the heat! at the town hall? yes. why are town halls and hospitals always hideous? there can’t be any necessity for it. tea indoors, out of the sun? how nice! i never do like tea out-of-doors myself really, though sometimes i pretend to. and the dear old room—almost just like it used to be. i am glad, though it makes me want to cry. yes. but where was i? oh yes, the weirdest ideas. even a crematorium was suggested. no, i am not inventing, dear violet. the good lady had lost her husband and was obliged to take him all the way to 112woking. most trying, of course! i was really sorry for her. but seemed so odd for a victory memorial. so we settled on a maternity home, a quite excellent idea. trenching on the improper, of course. it brought the fact of babies coming into the world into such a very concrete form as it were. but so necessary just now—and that they should have every chance. so even the dear ladies who attend st. christopher’s church agreed. we parted in the utmost harmony. so pleasant—and so unusual!”
“and have you settled on a war memorial?” asked north, rescuing her handkerchief from selina’s clutches.
“not yet! and i see no prospect—we are still talking. we shall until some adventurous spirit among us says, ‘well, something must be done.’ then we shall go the way of least resistance—always so safe and so unoriginal. another of those delightful sandwiches, please. your own devonshire cream, of course. why can’t my cook make devonshire cream? but where was i? oh yes—the war memorial. then we shall erect an artistically offensive monument. who invented that word, i wonder. and did the word come from the monstrosity, or after? but it is so descriptive of 113what it is. yes. and what is your idea of a good memorial, miss seer?”
“i have only one idea at present,” said ruth, smiling. “and that is cottages.”
“quite a good one too,” said north. “why hasn’t anyone thought of it?”
“much too obvious, my dear,” exclaimed lady condor. “the people are shrieking to be housed, so we shall build them a library—yes.”
“and the pithians will build themselves winter gardens and billiard-rooms and marble swimming-baths,” said mrs. riversley.
“pithians!” exclaimed lady condor. “who was it thanked someone else for a word! thank you, dear violet. did i invent it myself the other day? how clever of me! pithians—yes. democracy will kill privilege as it did in france, but the pithians arise on our ashes—or should it be ph?nix? i am getting dreadfully muddled—it comes from talking too much. roger, why don’t you talk, instead of letting me monopolize miss seer and all the conversation?”
“my dear lady, the pithian glory is but for a moment. we are all converging to the same heap of ashes with amazing velocity, and what will arise from those ashes you must ask a wiser man than i.”
114“you think seriously of the outlook?” asked ruth.
north helped himself to more bread-and-butter. “i don’t think,” he said. “it won’t bear thinking of—when you can do nothing.”
then lady condor, for once, put a straight question without continuation.
“what do you think of things?” she asked, looking at ruth.
the silence grew, in some odd way, tense, while they all waited for the answer. it surprised north to find that he was waiting for it with something which distinctly approached interest.
ruth seer’s face looked troubled for a moment, and the colour came sweeping into it like a flood, and left her very white. when she spoke she felt as if the words came, dragged with difficulty, from some unknown consciousness. and though the words she spoke, undoubtedly she felt to be true, were a testimony of her own faith, yet she had only that moment known the truth she was stating.
“i believe,” she said slowly, haltingly, but with a strange intensity of conviction, “i believe we are not alone. things are in the hands of the men who have given their lives so that things should be different—better. their influence is here—all about us. they, with added 115knowledge—guide—through our darkness. it is their great reward.”
there was another silence, and ruth flushed again painfully, under the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes. “where did you get that idea from?” asked lady condor.
“i don’t know,” she answered, then amended her statement. “at least, i am not sure. but i believe it is true.”
“i like it,” announced her ladyship. “i like it enormously—yes—quite enormously. my poor dear hartley! he was so keen on everything, so interested in this old world. he didn’t want rest in heaven—at twenty-four. no—is it likely? and les choses ne vont pas si vite. it isn’t in the nature of things they should. nature hasn’t great big gaps like that with no sense in them. i don’t know, my dear, if i’m talking sense, but i know what i mean, and i’m sure it’s right. yes—i like your idea.”
“but that does not make it true. some people can believe anything they want to. i can’t.” mrs. riversley moved impatiently from her seat. “all we know is, they are gone, so far as we are concerned; we cannot see or touch or hold them any more. why do you discuss and imagine? they are gone.”
lady condor shrank together at the words. the wonderful vitality which enabled her to 116defy age and satiety failed for the moment. she looked old and piteous.
“yes,” she said, “they are gone.” she looked at north. “and you can tell us nothing—with all your learning—with all your discoveries. and the parsons talk of faith and hope. yes. but we have lost our first-borns.”
north did not answer. he gathered her various belongings and put them in her lap. “there are one or two things i have to do to the car,” he said.
the door opened on to a clamour of dogs. sarah and selina, shrill with welcome, barked in chorus around larry, who appeared to have just arrived. “now what the devil——” muttered north to himself, while larry smote him with a feathered paw, and begged with wistful eyes for pardon.
ruth sat very late out on her terrace that night. the heavens were dark, but full of stars. their radiance filled all space. who and what was it had spoken those words this afternoon, for neither the thought nor the words had been her own? she believed it was a true thought; something deeper than brain or understanding knew it was true. and ruth seer sat and prayed. was she on the threshold of that open doorway, which in all ages men have sought and sought in vain? had she somehow 117stumbled on something vast and beyond all measure valuable? she knew how valuable, she had seen the dead men lie in thousands waiting burial, and heard with her soul the tears of their women. gone, as violet riversley said, out of sight, or touch, or sound. and yet surely a communion deeper and fuller than sight, or touch, or hold, had sprung up, was growing, between herself and one of those dead men. a man unknown to her on this physical plane. that was the crowning wonder of this wonderful thing which was happening. how had it come about? what did it mean? and it was no thing apart from this earthly life, from the little daily round. it was no other world.
the night deepened. a magic of starlight lay on the farm, on the dull silver of the stream, over the violet distances. the little farm she loved, with all its sleeping creatures, belonged to the wonderful whole, the great space, the immensity of light, the glory and the mystery.
the beauty of it all was like a draught of wine, was like a silver sword, was like a harp of gold.
and suddenly a nightingale began to sing. a small brown-feathered thing with that wonder of sound in its tiny throat. and then it came. faith—hope—they cannot pass the open door—only 118love. and love not of one to another, however deep, however true, but love of the universal whole, that love which she and dick carey had in common, focused as it were on thorpe. that was the password, that the key, that the communion between the living and the dead which she had found.
and larry, lying at her feet, for north had let him stay, waved a slow-moving tail, and dreamed, content.
up above, on the hill, the lights of the great pithian mansion, with all it symbolized, went out one by one, and ruth, who loved her england, was not afraid.
a deep sense of great responsibility remained. if that which she had sensed was really so, and she had neither then nor at any later time any doubt of it, what had they, with their wider knowledge, the great advance in evolution which they who had made the supreme gift of all they had on this physical plane must surely have attained, what had they to build the new order with save those who were left? living stones for the great new temple never made with hands.
the glory of it touched ruth as with a sudden blaze of light. the thought was like a bugle call. to work with for them still. she had only herself to offer. one small stone to shape 119for use, to make as perfect as might be. she offered it under the starlit heavens with all her heart. life took on a new and more beautiful meaning, any work of service a deeper, fuller joy. it was still for, and with, them.
